Twenty-two years ago, when Erna stood outside her house, “the windows were as high as my chest”. Now they’re knee-height.
As their home has sunk, she and her family have had to cope with frequent flooding. In the most extreme cases “we used canoes - the water kept coming in and swamped the ground floor”, she says.
Erna lives in the Indonesian capital Jakarta - one of the fastest-sinking cities in the world. Her home is in one of the worst-affected areas, the north of the city, and is now much lower than the road.
Just before the hour, I stroll off the subway and head straight to nearby Nakamura Tokichi Honten; once the supplier of tea to the emperor and now arguably the most prestigious matcha purveyor in Japan. I've heard securing a table at their cafe can be difficult, so I grow nervous as two girls scamper ahead of me. The cafe hasn't officially opened yet, so I grab a numbered ticket to reserve a spot. Somehow there are already 35 people ahead of me in line.
While I wait, I stroll through the shop and browse the many matcha products lining the shelves – ice creams, confections, even matcha-infused noodles. But I'm looking for some of the actual stuff: matcha powder.
Best Friends is splattered with astute observations and imaginative prose: A breeze carrying smoke from a barbecue resembles “dry ice from a Duran Duran video”.
Running through the novel like a watermark and mirroring its whimsical tone is Meehan’s wordplay.
The realist novel comes with a fiction of resolution, progress, ending in a new and better place. Bessette defies that fiction. In her, I find the form to fit our ongoing present, where hiding our tears seems disingenuous—but so does the fantasy of the neoliberalism smuggled into the traditional novel. In concealing tears, in looking away, or down, at a shoe, or a stain, those stories hide much more than tears. They come excusing the violence we are facing.